5/16/2019
Probably not a good day for me to write. When pondering how to tell stories about my father leaves me in rapid thought, but not in particular the details of the stories, I probably ought not try to put them down on paper. But, it’s Father’s Day, so let’s see what appears on the page, shall we?
This was not the SIMH today, but a song my father sang while he worked (he always sang while he worked.) The song I’m remembering at this moment is “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine.” I never heard him sing it all the way through, I don’t think even a whole verse. But it touched me, made me feel ashamed sometimes, when he would sing, “I’d give all I own if I could but atone, to that silver haired daddy of mine.” Lyrics were by Gene Autry and Jimmy Long, but I couldn’t find the year. It’s pretty old, heck, I’m pretty old and daddy sang it when I was a kid!
All kinds of people recorded it, Jim Reeves, The Everly Brothers, even Simon and Garfunkel, but I only remember hearing my dad.
Some of the other songs he sang as he worked were, “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad;” “If We Never Meet Again This Side of Heaven,” “The Blood that Stained the Old Rugged Cross.” The last one was recorded by Carl Smith way back in the 50s, but he wrote it a good while before that.
These songs which daddy sang while he worked usually reflected how his thinking had been going during the day’s labor. He had the kind of work ethic that said, “get up and go do it,” whatever it was he had to do. When I heard him singing, it was generally when he was doing a job without anyone else around. His voice would ring out suddenly! He never sounded sad or disappointed when he sang. (I’m sure he liked the sound of his own voice, we all do, you know.) He sang with a purpose, a purpose he never really shared, but one which defined who he was in that moment, at least to me. I can’t remember ever resenting his voice, even if it interrupted my thoughts. On the job, we never played the radio. (The only exception I can remember would’ve been a basketball tournament game, maybe a World Series game, or if we were working on Memorial Day (the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race was played on that holiday.) He never wanted anything to be in the way if he called for one of us.
Aside from his love of music, what comes to my mind about working for him is this: he never expected any of us to always work for him. If I came to him and said so and so needs help tomorrow with putting up hay, or planting tomatoes, or whatever, he’d say, “ok” and then I could come back just that easy. Early in my married life, I had scads of short-lived jobs. Each time I would tell him about the next one, he would simply say, “Well that’ll be good experience for ya.” He never, ever said you won’t like it or that’s not what you need or anything of a negative nature. He was a very positive man about life.
If some things seemed rough or his day was getting long, he might say, “We’ll never get out of this world alive!” But, if the trouble persisted past those thoughts, he might say, “Why, we’ve got to make it, what else is there?” —not a saying I fully understood as a boy, but fully understand now.
One last thought about my dad, whom I still wish I could have a talk with even though he’s been gone 32 years: I never saw him in bed sick. Once, he was stung by several bumblebees on a job at Camp Atterbury and came home and took about half day off, but got up (as my mom would say) “outa his sick bed” and drove about 40 miles to preach a funeral. Then, late in life he was in the hospital for a couple of days having a pace-maker put in. Other than those two times, I never knew it if he was too sick to get out of bed. He was standing at a checkout counter in a Walmart paying for a bottle of Vitamin E when he collapsed and was gone.
He had only one request of the Lord for his leaving here: he truly feared going to a nursing home. He had visited them for years and really prayed not to have to do that. It seems the Lord honored his request. Looking forward to eternity with him.
Thanks for reading, the Elder
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